Painting 1, Exercise Mixing greys – anachromatic scale

For this exercise, I had to start by mixing black pigment into white to create a tonal scale. I worked on this a couple of times because I felt I managed the scale gradient, so stopped at the second attempt. It was an enjoyable exercise because it really makes you look at the many different tones that can be made by just adding white. I felt happy with my attempts.

Then I had to study the scale and find the tone that is equidistant between black and white, known as neutral grey. Once found it was to be painted on two scraps of paper and one place at either end of the scale and look to see if they appear the same. I painted one scrap of paper and then cut it in half this gave a greater chance of the two scraps used being the same colour for the experiment. I was then asked to look at them in situ and see if I thought they looked the same. I found they didn’t, the grey under the white looks darker than the scrap under the black, it was an optical illusion as they are in fact the same. This supports the Research previously undertaken showing that hues and tone do have a visual affect over one another.